


Queen Goes off a Cliff

by damalur



Series: Suicide Chess [2]
Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-06
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2018-01-11 08:52:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1171121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/pseuds/damalur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If suicide is your delight, then bottle blonde's your color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen Goes off a Cliff

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Odyle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odyle/gifts).



 

 

Pawn (♟) says, "Checkmate."

Queen (♕) goes off a cliff—

 

 

1.

He had not mellowed with age.

He was twenty, thirty, forty, movement slower every year; one day he would stop moving entirely, would hang suspended in time as the rest of his life passed by. He would hang, suspended, at the peak, like an astronaut at the apex of an inverted catenary curve, and he would watch the people who passed by below, and one day—if he was very good—he would be so still that the universe would reabsorb him, and it would be as if he'd never existed at all.

Bullshit.

Fine. He was forty-two, with arthritis in his hands and a perpetual scowl etched into the character of his face. He didn't drive, rarely took the bus, had picked up the habit of cancelling his classes when it was raining too hard to walk to work. He had no time for games, no time for students, and little but time on his hands. Time, and arthritis.

Good for you, Dr. Cooper. You're a real _winner_.

-

She was thirty-nine, with peroxide hair and blood-red nails and teeth the white of diamonds; trailed by one engagement, broken, the product of her twenties, and another, intact, the result of two years of careful maneuvering. She was anticipating her first marriage. He was wealthy, educated—a lawyer, not that it mattered with that kind of family—with an older sister and a fleet of luxury cars over which Penny had free reign.

In private, she smoked; in public, she wore white scarves over her platinum hair, smiled often, chased and drew out the threads of conversations until her partners relaxed. She'd had practice. She was practiced. In Nebraska she'd waited tables, in Maine she'd driven a dump truck, in Washington she'd kept the payroll for a logging company. She was "educated," with a rube degree in business from a third-rate school.

Her hair was chemical blonde, and her fingernails were razors; she knew the contract of her endgame, and what sacrifices were required. She had not mellowed with age.

 

 

2.

They met for the third time at a fundraiser—"targeting low-income education," blah blah blah. He was there as a token, she was there as the centerpiece, and an hour before midnight they found a dark corner and hissed their niceties.

"Sheldon, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Are you still not married? That seems like a...long engagement."

"Different fiancé."

"Fascinating. Did something happen to the first one?"

She sipped her wine, sent a gladless smile to a face across the room. "I cheated on him," she said. "In a train station. The whole thing kind of fell apart after that, believe it or not."

He looked at her, at the elegant, easy way she held the stem of her glass, at the satin sheen of her clutch and the cheap-looking toy tiger attached to the clasp, at the deep décolletage of her dress and the long, naked line of her throat. Her makeup was thick, her eyeliner dark, her neck draped with fine jewelry. However much silver and gold she used for adornment, the metal of her would show through; she was brass to the core.

"And how is it," he asked, "not being a waitress?"

Someone in the past six years had taught him sarcasm. "Oh, I don't know, Doctor Cooper," she said, "probably a lot like not being a Nobel prize winner."

His upper lip drew back. "Should I pay for your company?"

"As I recall, you already have." She finished the last of her wine, handed the glass to a passing waiter, and tucked her clutch under one arm like an archer nocking an arrow. Before she left, she fired a parting volley: "Don't ruin this for me, Sheldon."

 

 

3\. 

He went home alone.

 

 

4.

She went home alone after making her excuses.

"Penny, love," said Heath, "My sister and Cal just got here, I know they'd like to see you—"

"No Tig?" she asked.

"He's upstair in the suite sleeping. Poor kid—he hates flying, and you wouldn't believe how many textbooks Jane needs to keep him entertained on a long trip."

"Tomorrow," Penny promised. "Definitely tomorrow. I...I have a headache."

"Of course," said Heath; and he kissed her cheek, and he gave her the keys to the Porsche.

After that, Penny felt like dynamite. On her way to the car, she tore off her scarf, tore off her shoes, yanked up the hem of her dress and waved off the valet; she ran across the blacktop and ignored the runs gathering in her stocking. She was gasoline and the night was a lit match. She felt like running again, running away, taking the car and running until she hit ocean.

 

 

5.

The envelope was decent stock, fine but not too pricey, the paper of the letter much the same. He'd typed it up on a computer, of course—not for Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D., was the personal touch of the hand-written note. Penny read it in the kitchen as she sipped at a glass of mineral water. His letter went: _I wish that we / may I see / strange to run / you looked defeated_. Not in so many words, of course, but she could read between his words.

He asked if he could see her again.

That was the curiosity, the perplexing top tone on an otherwise staid and predictable gesture (old lover, new flame, regrets, they'd had a few)—that he humbled himself enough to apologize and ask if _she_ would come to _him_ , thereby transferring the power of the surprise overture to Penny. She wasn't sure she liked it. She didn't like it. She didn't like it, but she was bored, and Heath was on a business trip, and Heath's family had taken a weekend vacation at a ski lodge.

The university was exactly the color of what she tried most to forget. And in his office was Sheldon: lean of body, intense of eye, perhaps thinning a little on top but otherwise looking as ageless as he had eighteen years ago. The chess board was in front of him in the exact center of his desk, black players arrayed on his side, white on hers; none of the pieces had been moved.

"Miss—" he started. He fell back into that address even now, even then, even at the train station. "Penny," he corrected.

"Doctor Sheldon Cooper," she said, removing her gloves and tucking them in the pocket of her cashmere coat. "Of all the offices in all the universities in all the world." His jacket was on the coat rack in the corner, and his sleeves were rolled back, exposing his bare forearms. He was pale there, even where the scar tissue snaked up the back of his bad hand, wrapped around his wrist, and curled up his soft inner flesh towards his elbow.

"Why are you here?"

"Why did you write that letter?"

He straightened in his chair; his hands vanished beneath his desk, and without needing to see Penny knew he'd curled his fingers over his knees. "Will you sit down?"

"No," she said.

"Social convention dictates that you sit," he said.

"Oh?" she said, arch; and then she circled his desk and sat prettily atop that, her legs crossed at the knee, her feet angled just enough to expose the vulnerably suggestive red underside of her Jimmy Choos.

He cleared his voice twice. "I have lately been attempting to rectify my ennui," he said.

"In English, Professor."

"Why are you marrying a man for whom you have no feelings?"

At thirty-nine, her body was still svelte, even if she was now broader of hip; her smile was lovely, her hair a river of silk; she could, if she chose, discard the appearance of trying too hard. She tipped her head so the sunlight fell across her face.

"Are you trying to save me?" she asked. "Or are you trying to make yourself feel better? It's a little late to start considering other people, buddy." This was unfair; she was not interested in fairness.

"I'm trying to right a wrong."

"Mid-life crisis," she summarized. "Good for you. Are we going to fuck now?"

 

 

6.

They fucked on his desk. It was nothing like coming home.

"I have to go," she said. "I'm supposed to watch my—nephew. When Heath's family gets home tonight."

"He isn't your nephew until you're married," Sheldon pointed out. "Stay."

"You have papers to read," she said. "Are any of your students screwing you for a better grade?" She zipped up her dress, pulled her underwear up, stepped into her shoes. "Better tell them it's a futile effort."

"You've changed. You used to be nice. You used to...to want."

"Crap," said Penny. "Did I? I must have forgotten how."

 

 

7.

If Penny was inwardly tolerant of Heath, she nonetheless adored Tig. He was a bright-eyed boy of eleven, dark-haired, sweet-natured, and brilliant. He looked nothing like either of his parents, a mixed-race couple who, although older and affectionate, shared with their son only a passion for perfection. They were high achievers. Of course they were; that was by design.

Penny adored Tig. She spent as much time with him as he allowed. He called her "Aunt" and taught her card games, filled her head with dazzling words that meant nothing to her and everything to him. He was a babbling brook, a pure font of information: things he'd learned from his books, things he'd learned from his tutors, things he'd thought of himself. Penny listened patiently between hands of gin rummy, and felt behind the curve of her rips a sweet, tender ache.

"Do you know about quasars, Aunt Penny?" he would ask, or, "I read about A.A. Milne today." His proper name was not Tig; that was a nickname, a shortening of Tigger, the remnant of childhood and a mother who had no idea to deal with a bouncing, over-active preschooler who could already differentiate between binary and base 10.

She sent him gifts sometimes, little toys or books she thought he might like. She never signed her name; once, feeling an entirely uneven spark of whimsy, she'd written, _The wonderful thing about Tiggers is that you're the only one._

"Have you heard of autohaemorrhaging?" Tig would ask.

And Penny would pick up her cards and say, "You know what, kid, I haven't. Tell me more?"

 

 

8.

They fucked on Sheldon's desk, on Penny's desk, in Sheldon's bed, in Penny's bed, in the car, in a train, on a plane, on the floor. "You're different here," Sheldon said.

"Engagement ring."

"And here."

"Stretch marks," said Penny.

 

 

9.

He started to press her, to pressure her, to remind her of Hollywood lights. She gutted him with the truth. It was a defensive measure.

"I put him up through an adoption agency," she said. "It was for the best, really. You didn't know, and I sure as hell wasn't ready to raise a kid."

And _oh_ , Sheldon's face was a world of stories, a universe of still waters, an entire multitude of verses he was unable to speak.

"I'm still not breaking my engagement for you," she added. Her cigarettes were in the nightstand, hidden behind a bible; she drew one, lit it, admired the flare of the lighter against the shadows of the room. "You don't deserve that, and honest to God, neither do I."

"I didn't ask," he said, stiff all over with honor.

"Yeah," she said, "you kind of did."

 

 

10.

Heath found them in bed together. There was no screaming, and he let her keep the Porsche; she was almost happy about that.

"I thought you said—" Sheldon's arms were crossed over his chest, his fists tucked against his sides.

"I didn't lie," said Penny.

"If you want money that badly—"

"I once ate rice for three weeks straight," she said. "Have you ever done that? No? I didn't think so. By the way—he was five when I gave him up. Five years old, smart as a whip, and one of a kind. The only person I've ever loved, and I gave him up."

He nodded, and in his face Penny saw for the first time a kind of understanding. "I suppose I deserve that," he said. "You're leaving now?"

"Yeah," she said. "Oh, and Doctor Cooper?"

"Yes?"

"Have a nice life," said Penny.

 

 

11.

She climbed into the Porsche and fired the engine. Her lips were red, her eyes were envy, her hair was blonde as suicide, and she thought west sounded like a pretty damn good direction. Beneath the curve of her ribs sat an ache that was not for what might have been.

 

 

12.

When Tig turned eighteen, she sent him a car, a football signed by the '95 Cornhuskers, and two tickets to the theater. She didn't sign the card, but she did include a reminder: _The wonderful thing about Tiggers—_

 

 

 

 

 **Coda**.

Pawn (♟) says, "Checkmate."

Queen (♕) goes off a cliff, takes a short drop and a sudden stop, rolls to her feet, picks up her head, dusts off her crown, and says, "Bite me."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by galfridian, who swooped in at the last minute and in the middle of the night to save the day. (Thanks, Jess!)
> 
> Lotte, this story in all ways belongs to you. It was born because you expressed interest in a "Suicide Chess" sequel, survived years of false starts because of your willingness to listen to me plot and moan, and was finally finished because you dropped Lana Del Rey's "She's Not Me" in my lap. There's a line in the song that goes, _I'm your real life suicide blonde._ I kind of felt like I should do something with that line, and this is the terrible, terrifying result.
> 
> Anyway: Happy Birthday! I tried to find you a video of a French-speaking threesome singing as a gift, but then I realized you've probably seen everything I could dig up. Team Shame!


End file.
